Today, the love-it-or-hate-it Super Mario Bros. movie turns 25. I plan to watch it again tonight (esp. since I own a copy). I hated it in a befuddled confusion when it was new, but have come to like it the same way you might your ugly dog that keeps walking into the wall.

The SMB film has moments where it's not half terrible (and plenty of moments where it's straight up garbage). Somehow, yes, they balance out. I privately suspect alcohol may enhance viewing tolerance levels.

Best scene will forever be when Mario pulls out a bob omb when fighting Koopa. Crowd totally loses its shit and Koopa drops a brick into his pants. Priceless.

^That's funny because when I was thinking about it, one of the things I was looking forward to was the bob omb scene.

I'm watching it now and on the streets, there's also signs for "twomp" and "Bullet Bill's." But it's so weird since nothing matches. I guess actually setting it in the mushroom kingdom would be too expensive, but I don't know, the sets are still pretty complex. Seems like it wouldn't have been much harder to film it in meadows and construct some giant mushrooms to jump on.

I also forgot that Toad is played by Mojo Nixon (he even says "the king is everywhere") or possibly I didn't know who he was the last time I saw this.

1) Had a very suspicious E-mail from Epic Games when I got home, letting me know my account was ready to use and all they needed was to verify my E-mail address via account login. Just to cover my bases, I asked both my dad and stepdad about their recent gaming activities, both gave negative replies, so I did the obvious thing and marked-as-spam and then deleted the clear attempt at phishing. Since I didn't provide any login data, the only thing the assholes who sent it have on me is an E-mail address, so I'm fairly in the clear.

2) Fucking Bungo. Faction Rallies in Destiny 2 have long been despised, but now they're basically abhorred. You can only pledge to a single faction during the rally now. Not just per character, but PER ACCOUNT. Once you sign the pledge you need not even bother playing with another toon, because there won't be any fucking point. I myself am extra-pissed off because somehow I suddenly don't have my Dead Orbit helmet for my Hunter, even though I know I fucking had one before. There's pretty much zero chance I would have deleted it, aside from a one-in-a-billion chance it was by accident, so now I have to hope the RNG blesses me again, because it took fucking forever to get it the first time. Goddamn it.

"We want your faction choice to have deeper meaning," said Bungo. Yeah fucking right, said the entire goddamn community. Forcing players to only use one faction per account per month is a fucking disaster.

Massive added "shields" to The Division this week, new patches to unlock based on story progression, elite enemy kills, dangerous areas cleared, etc. Completing them unlocks rewards in The Division 2, but if the datamining is at all true, I won't be unlocking very many of them. Even if I do manage more than a handful, going by the rewards (broken into tiers based on how many shields unlocked), I don't even care for most of the unlocks: one shield gets you a weapon skin, four get you a jacket and a sleeve patch, and then the next backpack skin and various emotes.

Granted, audio logs are also unlocked, and those I would like to get and listen to. Doing so of these shields (like killing the weekly high-value targets) will require either some finagling on my part (e.g., I use a ballistic shield to stay alive) or a teammate.

^The Elvis and Travolta thing were great. And the crazy jumps and snakes are so bizarre for that game.
Only thing I'd disagree with is calling Play Misty for Me "obscure," though I would grant that it's an unlikely reference for a ten year-old to make in 1990.

Oh don't get me wrong, it was a good video and he was very clever with a lot of his references and usage of jokes. I'm just of the opinion that he did a touch more effects-wise than I think he typically does, but I might be imagining things.

Unrelated: Massive brought back the first global event, Outbreak, and I basically immediately started working towards shotgun headshot kills to unlock one of the masks. Things got a little funny when I unlocked it with 152/170 kills, so I cautiously finished the challenge and then equipped it.

Going to try a couple of other challenges next, but hell if I earn them without a meatbag to help me.

So I finally made the move and geared up with Tactician's Authority in The Division so I could try for the one patch I wanted. The commendation requires you to complete an Outbreak playlist mission on hard, with the special modifier set to either Severe or Critical, and you cannot be infected (health drains when enemies get close).

I had tried this before, when Massive first re-ran Outbreak, and had come relatively close but failed at a few points. This time I was properly geared and had a better idea of what to do, and with much better weaponry and skills. I had a couple close calls but spammed the seeker mines, letting them take out most of the enemies throughout the level and using mostly my sniper, with an assault rifle in case some foes started getting too close for my liking.

Final boss and his goon squads meant a ton of explosions, and me picking at him from a distance, but when the mission finished I had earned my patch and also another commendation for using no medical skills to replenish my health (aside from health-on-kill traits for my armor or weapons).

Going to be running around the open world from now on, using seekers fucking everywhere.

I'm farming landmarks in the far-northern tip of the Dark Zone, and start grabbing some loot. After checking for rogues and seeing none, I call in a chopper, clear the NPCs that come...and then out of nowhere a rogue agent drops a shock turret and melts me, stealing half of my loot.

Pissed, I wait at least five minutes before returning to the area and trying again, carefully checking to see if that same douchebag is still moping around. I decide to risk it and try again. Once the chopper shows up, so does the rogue, but he's not disavowed this time so I can't harm him, and he even puts his own bag onto the extraction rope. I load up, and right before the loot is safely dismissed the guy makes his move, attempting to cut the rope.

I hit him with my sticky bomb, my assault rifle, and then my SMG, wasting him and earning my very first rogue kill, unlocking a commendation and a trophy at once.

I'm very certain he was just going for the rope-cutting challenge, because otherwise he would have shocked me again and or at least attempted to fight back. I've heard how one can very rarely encounter rogues with a shred of honor to their names, so I'm guessing I met one.

On the one hand, I despise the guy for the first encounter, but on the other hand, I grudgingly respect him for giving me half a chance.

Of course, now I kind of want to put on another loadout and start actively hunting rogues and improving my PvP skills, but I'm still hesitant for that. We'll see.

Watched the past couple James & Mike Mondays, and seeing them play X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse and Maximum Carnage really brought back the nostalgia (never played Apocalypse, but Carnage was an obsession I had back then).

Really want to play them again now, especially since I was never able to beat Carnage as a kid.

Played about 20 minutes of Donkey Kong 64 before it seems like my system got fried. I wasn't as far in the game as I thought, but I would have liked to have played more. I am sure an N64 system cost more than it should these days, but it HAS to be replaced.

I ended up playing around with the SNES mini instead, after not being able to find my place in Illusion of Gaia on the original console.

Ah, that feeling I got when I reached the 250 landmarks cleared in the Dark Zone in The Division.

Followed immediately by the reminder that I now need exactly 500 more landmarks cleared in order to get the fucking patch/complete the commendation.

Ah well, at least I can more easily reach supply drops with the bonus close-range damage granted from the global event modifier being omnipresent. Currently sitting at 58/75, and I'd probably have 60 if it wasn't for a squad of others getting to one just before I could (and then murdering me) and a couple others being simply too far away to reach in time. But I'm steadily closing in on that prize as well.

As for Destiny 2, I'm resigning myself to never getting to reset my Valor rank in the non-competitive mode(s) for Crucible (sadly I'll thus never unlock this new pulse rifle I want pretty badly). I can barely bring myself to bother with PvP anymore, so I guess I'll be looking up a YouTube review of the gun and hoping it's rotated into the general Crucible loot pool later on.

At least I unlocked the final ornament for my Hunter's Dead Orbit armor, the only time I've unlocked all enhancements for any of the factions (would have unlocked the DO helmet skin for last season if I had gotten around to asking up help from others to assist in getting through the Nightfall then, but oh well). Sucks (understandable, but sucks) that unlocking armor ornaments with one character doesn't unlock them for the same slots on armor for other characters.